The Big Bang System - Chapter 32

“The purpose of the anima tempering sigil is to convert pure anima into condensed anima, which can then be used for advanced anima manipulation that cannot be accomplished just by funnelling large amounts of anima into a project. This is needed for many of the advanced constructions and decreases the charge time of runes, something useful in combat.”

The sigil was essentially a steel plate, but the runes on it are incredibly tricky, more than twice the size and complexity of the runes required for the gathering pool (though thankfully many of the component runes were the same). The component runes that it uses are vig, motion (mt), flow (hryng) as well as a couple ones she hasn’t seen before: pressure (crsh) and shape (fm).

First, she practices writing the runes individually on a galladium tablet she had created for learning. Once all the runes are familiar to her she starts to combine them into pairs; a little bit more tricky but still within her ability. Once they are in pairs she can start combining again and again; the difficulty increasing with each cycle. In the beginning, her mistakes are few but with each step, she makes more and more. By the time she has completed the entire rune there are several dozen mistakes that range from minor deviations to a misplaced line; all of which have to be fixed in order to have a working rune.

The only way to fix the mistakes is by practice. Again and again, she repeats the rune; 31 mistakes, 29 mistakes, 23, 19, 17, 13, 7, 5, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1. Finally, 0. Angela almost gets ahead of herself but quickly reins in her pride; completing it with no mistakes once is good but until she can complete it with no mistakes every time she hasn’t truly mastered it.

Time passes far more rapidly than Angela notices and its only by the time she has finally finished completing the next four runes correctly that she starts to notice her bodily needs. Yawning, she heads to bed; she could always continue tomorrow.

After resting and refreshing herself she wakes up and continues her practice. As opposed to what she had anticipated her skill hadn’t declined overnight but had actually increased, breezing through the rune with ease.

After one or two more attempts to make sure that she was truly accurate, Angela begins to work on the real thing. With all her practice it only takes her two attempts (the first fails due to the difference in materials) and the construction is quickly completed.

Anima tempering sigil: converts normal anima into condensed anima at a slow rate.

consumption: 3 anima/h

production: 1 condensed anima/h

The consumption was rather high at almost half of her total production but if she ever needed to she could always create more of the gathering pools. Right now most of her anima comes from deconstructing crops anyways, so she doesn’t mind as long as she remains in the positive.

With the sigil complete she can finally finish the quest and move on.

[Construct a rank one anima tempering sigil: 1/1, reward: magical materials and how to make them (book) (complete)]

The book enters her library, and she quickly takes it out, dropping it on her inscription table with a resounding thud. The book is impressive and could even be called a tome with elegant engravings and a grand, cursive title. The thing is, however, massive and is almost unliftable due to the weight.

Opening up the first page Angela sees that it is sort of like a cookbook, with general instructions followed by a lot of recipes for the various materials. She flicks through it briefly before reading the information at the start.

“Once the boundaries of natural materials have been surpassed, an arcane practitioner must create their own through special methods. Each material has a specialised use and many of the most common have been recorded in this book. The next couple pages will include basic general practices such as infusing, tempering and enchanting which are all used to create common magical materials such as mythril or titanite.”

The rest of the page is more such information as well with the next being a contents page, and so Angela turns to the third page: infusing.

“Infusing is the art of imbuing materials with magical properties by directing anima through the natural channels of the material. This takes great precision and experience and is generally only available to novice rank magi. First one must find the channels. This requires one to probe the material with small strands of anima which are delicate, one wrong turn will result in the strands breaking and thus care and precision is needed to map out the entire channel. Next, the channel must be widened by sending increasingly larger amounts of anima through the channel. Once the channel is sufficiently widened the process must be finalised by sending the limit at which the channel can hold anima; too much and the material will break, losing its properties entirely, too little and the process won’t finalise and one has to try again.”

Next page is tempering, which takes a different tack to enhance the materials.

“Tempering is a branch of forging that is only available to accomplished smiths. Tempering requires large amounts of physical force to be applied to a material (usually restricted to metals) while at high temperature. The force must be directed to the natural acupoints of the material and will open them, allowing anima to be absorbed from the environment to strengthen the material. The amount of force requires differs from material to material but usually surpasses the limit of what a normal human can produce by many times.”

Finally, she got to the last technique recorded in the book: enchanting.

“Enchanting is the process used by inscription masters to create magical materials. This process uses runes to enhance features such as durability, malleability and many, many more. The enchanting process is both the easiest to explain and also the hardest due to the nature of inscription; something that requires precision, accuracy, confidence and an unshakeable will.”

YES! INTERNET! I can see, I! CAN! WRITE!

*ahem*

now for the bad news…. I have an exam around about the first week of august. that means im only writing one ch per day until then, cause I need to study